9/22/04

The Song Story

This is the title song for the short movie Stinking Cigar by Arun. Stinking Cigar produced by Eternal Rainbow creation was shot in NJ and is scheduled to be released in trigger street.com very soon. I take great pleasure in working in this project.

After reading the movie script, I felt creating simple theme music for the story will carry the mood in the story line all thorough, Director [Arun] also insisted on the theme music concept. After reading the script while traveling from Silver Springs to Washington DC frankly it took me about 20 minutes to get the melody line in my head. Same evening the basic track was laid and the projected theme music was kind of ready, a prototype version.

Arun and I had planned a song for the title credits. My plan was to embed this theme music as the “chorus” for the song. It seemed workable to the team. Before everything I have to find proper words for the score. I requested my writer Udhaya to come up with words that fits the mood, since Udhaya had already worked on the dialogues in the short film, he came up with the words very quickly, to my great surprise the chorus lines he sent in the first cut matched my theme melody 100%. Best part was, Udhaya had not heard my theme music; even Arun had not heard it till then. I preferred them hear it only after I complete the arrangements. After this great coincidence, I started to feel more energy presence to complete the song. I created a basic groove for the track and started to record vocals with Alisha, Alisha has already sung in my composition, we did the “Bharatham” track, as of today downloads for this song ranges around 2500+. So I was really happy to work with her again. A great find for my composition, Alisha as usual did the track quickly; she and her dad Dr. Thomas took a rough mix of the track to review it.On my side, reviews after reviews, I started to feel about my backgrounds, it did not jell the way I wanted, I was complaining to my peers and more to myself about this. I felt the beats and arrangements needed rework. So I took the drastic step to scrap out the existing arrangement, decided to rework this from scratch.
Alisha for her part, just like me a self critic, clearly told me she wanted to redo major portions of it. Thanks to Dr. T who created the energy to work again on this track. During the long weekend when everyone was relaxing on their paid holiday, we recorded the vocals again, this version seemed to jell quite well, finally got it mixed, sounds were balanced and the date of release was set.Working on an English track is new to me; I have no prior experience of any sort, still was keen to learn this cross over music and wanted to try it out. I can also put forth some Indian music ideas over it. Arun provided a great arena to test this out, with Alisha’s and Udhaya’s great support, I was able to do this to our satisfaction, I hope people would welcome this and encourages us to work more. Please listen to this track and send your comments.